Found: Adorable Childhood

When I visited Tennessee last week, my grandmother had put together a few things that she thought I might want to have. Lord only knows where she actually kept these things once she moved into the nursing home, but I got a real kick out of seeing some of the photographs and letters that I had written before.

I shared these with my Bride when I got home. Note: Nanny is the name my older sister christened my grandmother with, and Crystal, Buck and Topsy were all dogs that my grandmother owned at the time (a Saint Bernard, a German Shephard, and a horribly angry miniature fox terrier, respectively). Apparently, I was writing on the side of the Mt. Kiliminjaro at the time, causing my page to slope as I wrote.

My Bride couldn't make it further than the "Buck sure is a pleasure..." line before devolving into helpless convulsions of laughter. Apparently, she never met a child who talked like John Wayne before.

But look at this face. How can you mock this face? Is this not the most adorable face you've ever seen? And look at those pants. Are they not marvelous? If I had a pair of pants like this today, I'd still wear them.

I think I'll skip the pictures she found of my high school years for now. When we were married, I told my Bride that all pictures from that era had been burned in a tragic and strangely localized fire.